Day 5 - 6/7/24 – First Hostel Day

Meadow Primitive Site (380.5) – 19E/Mountain Harbor Hostel (395.5)

Hump Mountain. Beautiful, expansive views

I got an early start to cover as much ground as possible in order to maximize my time at the hostel in the afternoon (can you say laundry!), so I started hiking at 7:15am. The trail mostly went through open fields, which was a nice change from the four previous days of dense forests. In addition to completing the NC AT section (see pic), I got beautiful views at Hump Mountain, and made it to Mountain Harbor Hostel by 2 pm.

It felt great to be done with a 2nd state on the AT!

My first order of business after checking in was hitting the food shop, where I quickly bought and ate an ice cream sandwich and a frozen lemonade. With my hunger satiated for now, I started doing my town day chores: laundry, getting rid of trash, cleaning my water filter, etc. Before the hostel got too busy (they had a full house of 27 guests that night), I took a nice warm shower and scrubbed off five days’ worth of dirt.

Then I went down to the hostel-adjacent food truck and ordered the biggest burger I have ever seen. Then I had an equally gigantic brownie sundae. As I was eating, I met fellow hikers “Lunch” and “Starbuck,” and did my first hiker interview after dinner of a mother-son pair. I am hoping to share the highlights from that conversation in an upcoming post.

I was so hungry for real (non-freeze dried) food and the food was so amazing!

My clothes really needed this wash!